


Patterns of Frost

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:03:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Bellamy's presence in her mind is, she thinks, rather like the patterns of frost on her windowpane: as beautiful and as delicate, unexpected until the moment she sees them and then, ah, as lovely as they are inevitable. It was so cold last night, of course there will be frost. And for a moment yesterday she was so certain—so of course he would be in her thoughts when she wakes.Clarke and Bellamy take a wintry walk in the woods and re-evaluate the nature of their relationship.





	Patterns of Frost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompts “I might be holding your hand, cuddling you and being touchy all the time, but it's not my fault it's a cold winter and your body is super warm!” and “Ice breaks under person A but they’re saved by person B and there are blankets and hot chocolate and warmth. Just give me all the domestic fluffy hurt/comfort please!” although I took creative license with both of them.
> 
> The ice palace that Bellarke visit is the Saranac Lake NY Winter Carnival Ice Palace because that's my home town and I was feeling nostalgic.

Bellamy Blake has been on Clarke's mind all day.

She starts thinking about him before she even gets out of bed, playing over the last moments of the previous night as she cuddles under her blankets, delaying that first unpleasant moment when her feet will hit the cold floorboards and she'll have to go searching for her slippers and robe.

She ruminates on stray bits of their conversation as she listens to her coffee brewing, the gentle background bubbles punctuated on occasion by the crack of a branch outside, over-burdened with snow. Bellamy's presence in her mind is, she thinks, rather like the patterns of frost on her windowpane: as beautiful and as delicate, unexpected until the moment she sees them and then, _ah_ , as lovely as they are inevitable. It was so cold last night, of course there will be frost. And for a moment yesterday she was so certain—so of course he would be in her thoughts when she wakes.

It is enough to make her giddy. She feels like she's sixteen again—except more light-hearted than she ever dared to let herself be at that age, or at any time since.

*

This is her first winter in the mountains. Her family used to spend their summers upstate, and she has a cache of fond memories of canoeing, hiking, boating, of eating ice cream by the lake and taking walks through the scenic downtown of the village, of weather that was always warm edging on hot, never humid, and evenings with her cabin window open and her bedside fan on, reading while she listened to the crickets and the occasional rustling of tree leaves in the breeze.

The mountains, the forest, the lake—nothing like the dreary urban winter she struggled through last year. All around her nothing but grimy old snow lying jagged on the sidewalk edge, and slush in all the gutters, and above an eternal no-color sky. She couldn’t paint in an environment like that. She could barely live in it.

She's not sure even now if she took her sabbatical because she thought the change of scene would inspire her, or because the soft golden sheen of childhood memories was too enticing, or just because she could, the move jump-started by an inexplicable current of impulse that she was powerless to resist. All she knows is that she rented a house among the evergreens, packed up her bags, and made the drive up in the second week of November, all in a mad rush of genius, or folly, or maybe just pure inspiration.

But she was grinning like a fool the whole ride north.

Her first morning in her new home, she woke up to snow flurries, and the snow hasn't truly stopped since.

*

She's washed her breakfast dishes, taken a shower, gotten dressed, and settled down in her studio with her latest work in progress, when she hears a knock on her door.

Her brow furrows.

No idea who that could be.

In truth, she’s glad for the interruption. Her painting, a more abstract style than her usual work, is not going well, and she'd love an excuse to set it aside for another day. But she feels a thrill of worry, too: images of marauding con artists or improbably escaped axe murderers lurk in the corners of her thoughts. Not _likely_ , no, but not impossible, and she _does_ live alone in an idyllic little corner of the woods, where no one can hear her scream.

Still, she sets her paintbrush down and heads out to the front hall, making sure to peer through a crack in the curtains before she even thinks of unlocking the door.

It takes a bit of craning and imaginative maneuvering to see her visitor, but when she finally makes out the familiar blue coat and the black knit hat and the industrial black winter boots, she sighs a belly-deep sigh of relief, which narrows out at the end into a grin. A genuine, goofy grin.

 _Bellamy_.

She'd love to throw the door open and fling her arms around him, and this instinct, as utterly unexpected as his presence itself, all but topples her off balance. Last night must have meant more to her than she'd even allowed herself to believe. Big all-encompassing bear hugs are not a usual sort of greeting between friends, after all, unless one of those friends has been away for months, or has just received particularly good news, or some other contingency like that.

She watches him stomp his feet, then take his hands, encased in brown leather gloves, from his pockets and blow into his palms. He reaches out and knocks on her door again. It's hard to tell from her angle, but he looks a little nervous.

Or maybe just impatient.

"Coming," she calls, a little embarrassed herself, and finally throws back the lock and opens the door. "Bellamy, hi." She tries to sound surprised, to conjure again some of the true shock of a few moments before, but to her own ears she sounds mainly relieved. "I—what are you doing here?"

He smiles, a little self-conscious (his cheeks are red, but it might just be, is probably just from, the wind), and shrugs. "Are you busy?"

“Um.” She purses her lips, thinks about the mess of green and blue on the canvas in her studio. "Not really." A deep bone-rattling chill is coming in through the open door, a full force wall of cold attacking her, so she pulls her sleeves all the way down over her hands. Then tilts her head. "If you wanted to hang out, you could have just texted me."

"I did." He raises his eyebrows, an I-caught-you-there gesture. "And I called, but you didn't answer."

Clarke looks over her shoulder, toward her bedroom, where her phone is sitting muted on her bedside table, so as not to distract her while she worked. As it always does, on days she swears she will commit herself to the creation of some art. "Right. Sorry. I put it on silent. Do you want to come in?"

She opens the door wider, and Bellamy quickly hops over the threshold, along with a thin trail of fluffy white snow, swept in by a gust of wind. "I thought you would never ask."

Clarke grins, and holds back inside herself a tight ball of wanting—wanting to hug him, still, wanting to kiss him hello, wanting to feel the deep-cold of his skin beneath the indoor-warm palms of her hands. Like a spring, the closer she holds it together, the more tense it becomes: energy just aching to be set free.

She's not sure what to do now, where to place her arms or how to stand. Her tiny front hallway suddenly seems vast, and she herself unmoored. "So you really just showed up to—"

"I wanted to see you." His words follow over hers in such a jumble that, at first, she does not recognize their significance. If they are significant. But he's staring at her, uncertain and brave, like he's hoping she'll read something in the set of his mouth or the tilt of his head. And she finds herself thinking about last night again. And about after, how she sat on the edge of her bed and wondered if she'd read too much into it, after all.

There is a light dusting of snow on Bellamy's shoulders and his hat, quickly melting in the toasty warmth of the indoors.

"Is it snowing out?" she asks, a change of subject for which she could immediately kick herself, and after which Bellamy's gaze immediately darts away from hers.

He glances back over his shoulder, out her window. "A little. Just some flurries."

She reaches out to brush the last of the flakes from his coat. This requires stepping just a little bit closer, and looking up at him, while he looks down at her. She means the gesture to read as: _I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be such a coward, just now._

"It's—actually pretty nice out," Bellamy adds, as Clarke drops her hand to her side again. "I thought we could go for a walk."

"A walk?" She turns a skeptical face on him. "I think all of the paths are covered in about three feet of snow."

"So?" He shrugs, and hits her with one of his half-grins: enough, or almost enough, to banish the moment of uncertainty between them. "You have snow boots, don't you?"

* 

**Bellamy’s Good Qualities (as compiled, accidentally, by Clarke over the course of the last week; a non-exhaustive list)**

**He's smart** : both life-smart (as she learned when he fixed her sink for her, her third week in town, looking very mountain-man in his plaid shirt with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows), and book-smart (always telling her random stories about the ancients, two or three paperbacks on the backseat of his car on a good day).

 **He's a proud big brother** : Clarke's never met Octavia, but she knows she's getting good grades at college and likes hiking and biking and swimming and just about every sport known to man and that she's saving up to travel the world after she graduates and that she's actually becoming a pretty good cook now that she's living on her own, and about a dozen other details, every one imparted with a beaming expression that, she's sure, Bellamy isn't even aware of when he talks. Before she met him, she was never jealous of people with siblings.

 **He's strong** : The bookcase he helped her pick out, haul home, and set up in her bedroom was not light. _At all._

 **He's self-sufficient and he knows how to cook** : She's seen his house, a cute little cottage not far from the downtown of the village, and it's almost suspiciously neat, with an organized kitchen and wall-to-wall bookcases and a little porch and reading chair out front. The first time he invited her over, he made her a salmon and rice dish and claimed it was just a _simple thing_.

 **He's resilient** : He's too guarded to have explained to her yet what exactly has etched the sadness in around his eyes, but she's seen enough herself to know how to read it. He's still here, though, still telling stupid jokes with his friends, still sharing fantasy stories and building models of the solar system with his fifth-grade students, and she is, in an odd and unwarranted way, so proud of him for that. (Also he's lived five winters in the north country and she's experienced enough of her first to know that takes some strength indeed.)

 **He's handsome** : INCREDIBLY handsome. His hair curls around his ears and over his forehead; he has an honest-to-goodness dimple in his chin like only movie stars should have; and her old college art teacher would be impressed by his _strong nose_.

 **He's reserved** : Yes, he'll gush about his sister and is always looking out for his friends, and she’s sure he's come to care about her over the last four months, but still there is that hesitant smile and the tilt of the head he uses when the happiness of a moment is too much. She's seen him waver around the edges of his feelings. The hugs that go on too long, to fill in the gap where words should be. This should be a negative, but she keeps her feelings guarded too, and she already knows that she's a sucker for people whose hearts are just too big to wear on their sleeves.

 **He's warm** : metaphorically and literally. His internal temperature must just run a few degrees too high because every time she gets close to him, she finds him radiating a deep thrum of heat, and all she wants to do is curl right up against the source. Especially on days like this one: ten a.m. and freezing and the flurries swirled around them by a cold shock of wind.

*

Before they go out, Clarke gets dressed in leggings, long pants, wool socks, boots, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, her winter jacket, her long scarf, a hat, and gloves, but this winter will not be held at bay even by such careful preparations. The air holds a chill much sharper and deeper than anything Clarke has known before. It numbs and freezes the exposed skin of her cheeks and nose and around her eyes; she can feel it beneath all of her layers like an extra blanket wrapped around her, sending shivers through her. As always, she briefly considers simply turning back and staying inside, in the safe and warm of her studio or bedroom. But when she looks at Bellamy's face and the open, awed expression the vista of pine trees and snow drifts has brought to his features, she figures, maybe it won't be too bad to spend a few minutes in the fresh air after all.

They make their way around the side of the house, to the path that leads down to the lake and the village beyond. Clarke's trudged her way through this snow before, but not since the last downfall came two days ago and erased every recent sign of human life from the woods. The trail ahead is now nothing more than a clean patch of white dividing the evergreens, themselves frosted with a layer of winter all their own, their branches heavy with snow that falls intermittently into the drifts below.

It is almost too much, Clarke thinks, to stare too long at so unbroken and unblemished a scene. She would call it unnatural, such a scrap of perfect beauty in such an often-ugly Earth, except that it is rather _too_ natural, a challenge for her mind to comprehend the unadulterated truth of the wilderness.

When she stepped out of her house for the first time after the first heavy snow of the year, she almost cried.

Even now, she's not entirely accustomed to it.

She'd worried, as they first stepped onto the path, that it would be too difficult to trudge their way through snow so thickly laid upon the ground. But the cold weather has frozen the top layer so, slowly but surely, they are able to walk across the surface without falling through. It is a delicate operation, akin to walking on water, and at first Clarke concentrates on settling her weight down just so with each step. She focuses her hearing on the crack and split of the frozen snow beneath their footfalls. The sound of their intrusion into the quiet.

Bellamy keeps his silence too. She can't imagine why he drove out here if not to talk, but when she glances at his profile she sees in the slight furrow of his brow and the set of his lips that he's just not ready, yet, to speak. And that's all right. Talking is a delicate operation, too.

As they walk, she links her arm through his and wraps her fingers around his bicep. Her shoulder bumps occasionally against his side, and they walk so close together that, sometimes, their legs brush against each other, too. A hundred small intimacies. That’s what it feels like. Once, she takes an awkward step, seems to veer away from him, and he pulls her back with a subtle tug of her arm until they're in step again. She gives his arm a squeeze and lets it linger.

The path winds around a wide corner and her house falls entirely out of view behind them. They might be at the ends of the Earth, now. Clarke leans her head against his shoulder, just for a few steps, and slides her fingers up a little farther on his arm. Just feeling him. Feeling the contours of him. Seeking out more of his warmth.

Even in the deep northern cold, Bellamy casts off an unnatural furnace-warmth, and as a gust of wind blows by them, throwing a riot of snowflakes into their faces, she shivers and huddles closer to him. She all but trips their feet up with each other as she tries to pull his body more completely against her own.

And yes, to herself, she can admit that the wind is partly an excuse. The solid heat of him so close makes her pulse jump.

"Too cold for you?" he asks, a barely suppressed undertone of amusement to his voice, as he brushes off the worst of the snow from his hat with one hand. A futile exercise: it's still coming down, slow and light but steady; Clarke can feel it gathering in her hair and on her shoulders.

"Too cold for any normal human being," she answers. "Please tell me this is a historically cold winter or something."

Bellamy makes a light considering noise and shrugs. "I'd say it's about average."

"And you're really, honestly not cold right now?"

"Of course I'm cold." He tilts his head back, looks like he's letting in the dizzy blue-white of the sky. Then turns back to her, and only then: "But it's beautiful, isn't it?"

She smiles. Maybe he's flirting, or maybe she's just reading too much into his love of the season—she's not objective about him anymore, can't trust herself like she usually unquestionably would—but it doesn't matter. He puts his hand briefly over hers, where it rests on his arm, and the gesture feels so simply, sweetly intimate that she no longer has any idea what to say.

*

Last night, seven p.m.: burgers and fries at the fast food place with a view, during the day, of the road and the lake on the other side; in the dark only their reflections in the glass. She picks up her hot chocolate to take a drink.  

“Ah.” Monty holds out one hand like a warning, and Clarke stops with her cardboard cup halfway to her lips. “Not yet.”  

“This is a very specific ritual,” Clarke notes. She glances over to Bellamy for some sanity in her confusion, and when he shrugs, a casual agreement without protest, she sets the cup down again.  

“If you tried to drink it now, you’d scald the top of your tongue off anyway,” Raven adds. She reaches across the table to steal some of Gina's ketchup for her fry and Clarke finds herself thinking _they are so fluid with each other, so at ease with each other in their habits and their traditions—_   

"It's simple," Jasper's saying. "Gorge yourself on food that's terrible for you, but delicious, and when you're done cross the street to see the palace. Take your drink to keep warm."  

"Relatively warm," Monty adds.  

—And sometimes she feels herself a part of them, too, weightless, as if she's known them ages longer than she has: laughing at Gina's stories of her encounters with tourists; trading her pickles to Jasper for some of his fries; her shoulder bumping up sometimes against Raven's and other times, more often, against Bellamy's as they sit six people to a four-person booth. Her leg presses against his under the table, and when she turns, within an unexpected pause that she's made in her own mind, and catches sight of them like moving whorls of yellow paint against the glass, she knows these minutes are being captured within her in some as-yet-unknowable way.  

Later, they grab their drinks, and Raven leads them in a dash across the road. Clarke feels the cold harshly at first, as a blast of pure frigid air when they step outside; and then, in the excitement, not at all until they crunch onto the frozen snow beside the lake in a jagged cacophony of steps. They did not run far, or fast, but the air stabs at her lungs. She bends to catch her breath, eyes closed.  

Then Bellamy tugs on the arm of her jacket. She feels his touch indirectly, a distant echo. But it's enough to make her look up.  

And: "Oh," she whispers under her breath. Her eyes widen and she reaches out for Bellamy's hand.  

She's seen the ice palace before: first the preparations; then the blocks of ice pulled from the lake, a loose collection of blue-white squares piling up along the shore like huge, frozen children's toys; then the building itself slowly coming into being. She drove by it this morning, almost complete and looming out of the corner of her eye. But this is the first time she’s taken it all in at night. 

The palace glows in red, yellow, green, and blue. The entranceway is a wide blue arch, with carved blocks of ice spelling out the year set on top; through it, just barely visible, Clarke can make out a frozen throne room, where two ornate chairs carved of ice sit in pride of place. The four crenelated towers at the building's corners make her think of medieval castles, fit for kings and queens and princesses. She is overcome quite suddenly by a fit of desire, a vision of herself moving right in, becoming an Ice Monarch and ruling over the lake and the mountains and the trees from the top of her shining candy-colored castle, until the end of the interminable winter sends her house melting back into the Earth. 

She doesn’t even care that her limbs already feel frozen, or that when she exhales her breath crystallizes in the air. Bellamy’s hand is still held tight in hers and as she tilts back her head, his shoulder bumps against her shoulder and his arm presses against her arm. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers. 

"It’s a maze this year," Jasper announces from off to her right.  

(If this is a moment, maybe, that he's broken—and Clarke's not sure that it is, except that as soon as it's gone she realizes she was imagining Bellamy's arm wrapped around her, wishing for it—then he gives no sign that he’s noticed.) 

"Really? They had enough ice for that?" Monty asks. "There hasn't been a maze in—" 

"Two or three years?" 

Clarke's hardly listening to them. She looks over at Bellamy, and can tell he isn't either; he's already watching her. "Hey," he says (Raven, to their left: "Ah my tongue! This is still too hot!" And Gina, half-joking: "Aw, poor thing"), "Do you want to go in?" 

 *

Clarke has never before had a friendship like the one she has with Bellamy. Usually, she knows exactly where she stands. She's had friends, close friends, friends with benefits, girlfriends, boyfriends; she knows that not every dinner-and-a-movie is a date and not every night together is true love, that love isn't always romantic and attraction pairs just as well with affection as with ardor, and she's been lucky: not every break has been clean and neat, but she's always been, at least, sure in herself. She's always known what she wants. And she's good at reading people, so she usually knows what they want too, sometimes before they know themselves.

But not with Bellamy.

Right now she knows that she wants to slide her fingers through his fingers and feel his palm against her palm; she wants him to wrap his arm around her shoulders so she's tucked in against him, stumbling over his feet as they walk. What he wants is a mystery.

When he looks at her again, his expression is, at first, soft and lovely. She might even dare to say _wanting_. But then something else shades across it, and whatever purchase she had on the moment crumbles beneath her feet. He looks somber. Maybe even sad, she thinks, or regretful. Something else she can’t name. Then he squeezes her hand again and clears his throat and in that second, the last bit of solid ground beneath her giving way, she understands.

Their pace slows. The regular pattern of squeaks and crunches as their boots crush down into the snow is thrown off, and that first sharp shock of knowledge stretches out like a taut band. She knows what will happen before it does. She knows from the sad downturn of his mouth and the regretful pinch of his eyes and the nervous inhale of his breath.

He's about to let her down easy.

"About last night," he starts, slowly, and Clarke, who has had only a spare few moments of pure panic in her life, recoils immediately from the oncoming moment as completely as if from an oncoming train.

She drops his arm and takes a step to the side and then ahead. Her movement shocks her almost as much as it seems to shock him—he's staring at her with his mouth slightly open and a furrow between his brows, confusion to drown out the pity—and for a moment, she's not sure what to do. She's broken his stride, but now what? So she takes another step ahead, and another, turning around as she does and sticking her hands deep in her pockets so her shoulders shrug up, because she imagines that this posture shows how casual she feels and that everything is fine, and then she continues walking, to widen the distance even more. And as she does, just to keep him from speaking again, she says, "We don't have to talk about it. There's nothing to talk about anyway, right, I mean—"

She does not look at his face, because she does not want to know how pathetic he must think she looks.

It’s hard to keep talking when there’s no substance to her words, so the only thing she can do is keep moving, her gaze stubbornly focused on the path they’ve already walked. But because she’s not watching where she’s going, she doesn’t notice that she’s wandered to the edge of the path. She doesn’t see the fallen tree behind her, either, until she’s bumped right into it with the backs of her knees.

Fifteen disastrous seconds follow. Her feet fumble underneath her, knocked off balance by the ice beneath the crunchy top layer of snow, and in a mad attempt to keep herself upright, she reaches out for the only help she can: a bit of tree branch overhead, which she yanks down with such force that the accumulation of snow precariously balanced above her comes down too.

When it’s over she finds herself tipped over backwards with her ass in the snow, covered with more snow, at least forty percent of her body already frozen, and her pride irredeemably bruised.

She pushes clumps of snow out of her hair, wipes the snow out of her eyes, and looks up.

Bellamy is standing over her, his eyes a wide mirror of the shock she still feels, holding out his hand to help her up.

*

By the time they make it to the maze, they are alone. They lost Jasper and Monty almost immediately, and Raven and Gina a few minutes before; Clarke's not sure where they've gone and doesn't care. Bellamy's still holding her hand and she feels light-hearted and young, as if this were a first date, a first-ever date, as if everything were new, brilliant as ice shining beneath sun. The rational, sensible adult part of her knows otherwise (they are _just friends_ ). But it's nice to let herself pretend, for a few seconds or a minute at a time.

To get to the maze involves ducking in through a side entrance, which feels sneaky and forbidden, and perhaps contributes to this sense she has of being younger than she is. A childlike feeling of wonder buoys her as she examines the glow of the ice; tilts her head back sometimes to take in the endless black depth of the night and the infinity of sharp, clear stars above them; laughs when they hit the dead ends. Laughs not because it's funny, but because she is enjoying herself so much and in such a simple and innocent way.

"You're really having fun, aren't you?" Bellamy asks, a bubble of bit-back laughter in his voice, as they turn another corner. They've met a few other evening-visitors in their walk, but this corridor is completely empty, but for them.

"I am," Clarke agrees. She swings their hands between them, and then, bold, turns on her heel to look at him. "I'm having a lot of fun." There's more she wants to say, but it exists in her as pure feeling not yet capable of being trapped up into words, so she takes a sip of her drink instead. Monty and Raven were right: it's the perfect temperature now, just hot enough to fill her with a sweet, pleasant glow, but not so scalding that she loses all her taste buds at the first hit.

She flicks out her tongue to lick an imagined scrim of milk off her lip. This is a mistake, because the frigid air immediately freezes the saliva on her lip, but it's okay. She wipes at her mouth with the back of her glove and Bellamy laughs, probably at the pained, bitter expression on her face, and she finds herself laughing a bit too.

"I know, I know," she says, and rolls her eyes at herself. "Rookie mistake."

"It's okay," Bellamy answers. "It's...cute." Then he takes a drink himself, quickly, and Clarke wonders if this is an excuse to hide his face because: _cute?_ He's never called her cute before. It wouldn't be a big deal at all except for the way he hesitated, so now she's not sure what to read into the moment. A confession? A mistake?

They've reached another dead end, but instead of turning back, they just stand there, hedged in on three sides by seven-foot-tall walls of ice, lit from above by a flurry of stars and a three-quarter moon.

Clarke doesn't let go of his hand, but she does take a step back, the heel of her boot squeaking against the well-worn path of snow beneath their feet, until her back hits the flawless deep cold of the ice wall and there's nowhere else left to go. She doesn't pull him forward. But he takes another step toward her on his own. They're standing so much closer than they need to be.

"Trying to become one with the palace?" Bellamy asks. There's a trill of amusement in the words but his voice is low and quiet, and his mouth is quirking up at the side, but he's not really smiling anymore.

Clarke tilts up her chin. "This is my home now. I'm the Ice Queen."

"I think you'll have to take that up with the actual Carnival Queen," he answers. His words don’t match the moment, how he drops her hand and instead rests his palm flat on the wall behind her. He's leaning in over her; the heat of his body beats the chill of the ice at her back and, not thinking, she slips her free hand into his jacket pocket and tugs him just an inch closer. His forehead almost touches her forehead.

"Oh, I could take her," she says, low, and Bellamy smiles, perfunctory, and only for a moment. Clarke takes a deep breath in, and lets it out in a slow fog. They're so close that when Bellamy shifts his weight on his feet, his leg bumps into her leg.

Now is when he should kiss her, or when she tips herself forward to kiss him, or perhaps both at once, if they're lucky.

But they're not.

A clatter of footsteps shocks them: someone being chased and someone chasing, and then two little boys in hats with puffs at the top and big blue jackets that reach down to their knees come skidding around the corner, rupturing the moment so completely that before Clarke is even quite aware what is happening, Bellamy has fallen back to the opposite wall. The ghost of his breath is still on her cheek. The little boys see the dead end and, struck either by the ice wall or by the grown-ups and their awkward bowed heads and bent postures, quickly turn on their heels and reverse course. But by then it is too late. Bellamy clears his throat and Clare rubs at her arms in an exaggerated shiver. She doesn't know what to say. Bellamy suggests they see where their friends have gone off to, and Clarke agrees, yes, that's what they should do.

*

Bellamy asks if she’s okay no fewer than three times on the walk back to her house. Clarke insists that she’s fine—“just a human icicle, that’s all”—but her teeth chatter with such force that she can barely form the words, and he doesn’t seem convinced. "Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself?" he asks again, as they hobble up the porch steps together, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist. "Not your ankle or your back or anything?"

"If you insist on me being injured, I can probably find a few bruises," Clarke answers, more sharply than she'd intended, as she disentangles herself and shoves open the door with her shoulder. She stomps her feet clear of snow on the front mat, then toes off her shoes. She doesn't need to see Bellamy's face to know the hurt puppy look he must be giving her, so as she shakes off the latest snow from her coat and hair, she adds, "I'm sorry. I'm not mad, I'm just embarrassed. That was just so _stupid_ of me."

"It wasn't," Bellamy says. Clarke shoots him a skeptical look, but he just doubles down. "Seriously. Clarke, do you know how many times I’ve slipped on ice and fallen on my ass?"

"No, but I didn't slip and fall on ice, I walked backward into a tree." She beats out the snow from her scarf with excessive force, then hangs it up with her coat by the door. "It's not the same."

"Okay, yeah, but there's no way to trip and fall that doesn't bruise your ego, so just—don't feel bad about it. Here." He takes her by the arms—a confident gesture that would have made her heart jump a day ago, but now just sends her stomach twisting—and tilts his head, searching out her gaze. "You must be freezing. You're turning blue. Let me warm you up."

"More like red, from embarrassment," she mumbles, but doesn't seriously argue. He's not wrong, anyway: even a normal walk through the woods would leave her with a frozen nose and cheeks, dizzy with a sudden blood rush to all of her extremities as soon as she returns to the proper warmth of the indoors, but having been buried in a mini-avalanche of snow has made the effects of winter on her frail human body all the more severe. All she really wants is to be bundled up and set in front of a fire to defrost.

That's about what Bellamy sets about doing. She doesn't have a fireplace, but he steers her to the couch, drapes a blanket over her shoulders, brings her slippers from the front hall, and then, before she can protest, pulls his sweater right off over his head and hands it to her.

She stares at it as if it were an alien object, and doesn't take it from him until he pushes it a little more forcefully toward her. He's wearing a long red button-down shirt underneath, slightly rumpled, and his hair is a regular mess, hat-head topped off with the after-effects of undressing. It's adorable. And she hates that it's adorable.

"I have a whole closet of sweaters of my own, you know," she says. She's holding his pullover in her lap, like a blanket. It's a white cable knit sweater that she'll probably swim in, but her fingers grab at it with an unintended force and, despite her protest, she knows if he tried to take it back, she wouldn't let him.

"Yeah, but mine's right here and this is an emergency," he answers. "And I didn't want to presume that I could just wander into your room and—"

"Never mind." She pulls it on, pulls the sleeves down over her hands. None of her sweaters are this cozy. None of them smell like Bellamy either. "I like it. It's nice."

He doesn't say anything in response, just stands next to the couch, uncertain and with an under-dressed air about him, and she remembers what he was about to say in the woods and realizes how awkward this moment must be for him. Worse even than it is for her. It's probably why he gave her his sweater: out of guilt. Now he wants to get this letting-her-down thing over with, but he also doesn't want to be mean, because Bellamy's just not a mean person at heart, and he's wondering what to do and how to bridge the gap.

Clarke takes a deep breath, and prepares to help him out. "Look, Bellamy—"

"I can make you some coffee. Or tea, or something."

She stares up at him, confused. He sounded almost panicked, just then, which throws her whole calculation slightly off.

"Um—sure. Coffee sounds nice. Are you sure—?"

He's already headed toward the kitchen. "Completely sure!" he shoots back over his shoulder.

By the time Bellamy's returned, she's covered her lap with the blanket and tucked it in over her feet, rearranged the cushions behind her and created an almost-perfect snuggly spot in which to slowly bring feeling back to her limbs. "Thanks," she says, with a small and apologetic smile, as she gingerly accepts the mug he hands her. She takes a tentative sip. Under normal circumstances, Clarke would never trust another person to prepare her coffee, but Bellamy's attempt is more than decent. She's impressed. And it probably shows on her face, because when she looks up at him, he's staring at her in obvious relief.

"Here." She shifts over, leaving room for him between her and the end of the couch. "Sit. Warm up." Now that she's gotten over most of her embarrassment, and the initial shock of Bellamy's cleared throat and repentant eyes, she's ready for whatever he could possibly say. She's ready for him to choose to sit on the chair instead. She's ready for the awkward _I'm sorry_ , and the even more awkward _goodbye_.

She's so calm that she doesn't feel anything sharper than a tiny jolt in her gut when he does sit down next to her, re-arranging her blanket carefully over them both. He takes a few sips from his own mug, but Clarke's watching him so carefully that she can count every indication of distraction in his frame, and soon, as she’d predicted, he's setting his drink down on her coffee table and picking at the fringe on her cheery green-and-white throw. Hesitantly, he moves his arm as if to settle it around her shoulders, then stops. "Mind if I—?"

"Um—no. Sure. Go ahead."

Either Bellamy is paralyzed with more guilt than she thought, or he is really quite bad at the quasi-break-up thing. But once his arm is around her, she can't help but cuddle up against his side, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. He's silent for such a long time that she begins to relax into the moment: warm inside and out; safe under multiple soft, cozy layers; and with Bellamy, who is (this is a horrible time to come to this realization, but epiphanies come when epiphanies come) perhaps her favorite person in the world.

"About last night," he says, eventually, voice cracking into the long silence. He sounds serious and nervous. His hesitation leeches out into the air and turns the whole moment inside out.

Clarke sighs, and leans forward to set her mug down next to his on the table. She knew it couldn't last forever, after all. "Okay," she answers, just as tentative and slow. "What about it?"

Bellamy stares at her for a long moment. Then his expression breaks into a sad, self-deprecating smile. "It’s just—before, on our walk, I was going to say, 'About last night, I really wanted to kiss you,' and then I was going to try again. But then you ran away from that idea so fast you literally buried yourself in snow to get away from me, so—I don't know why I'm even bringing it up again." He sinks into the couch cushions, his head tilted back toward the ceiling in defeat, and starts to pull his arm back from around her shoulders. "Maybe I'm a masochist."

Clarke stopped listening somewhere around _wanted to kiss you_ , and now, as he crumbles back against her couch cushions, she sits up ruler-straight and grabs his arm. “Bellamy.” Her brain is racing fast, re-arranging data, theories, the memories of the last twenty-four hours and especially the last twenty minutes. She was wrong, and she's never been so gleefully happy to be wrong. "Bellamy, I didn't—I thought you were going to say it was a mistake. That last night was a mistake."

"What?" He half-sits up too, looking up at her again, a mirror of her utter shock. "Why? What gave you that idea?"

"You just looked so...apologetic—"

"I was nervous!"

"So was I!"

"Obviously we shouldn't have been!"

He's starting to crack up, and she’s grinning wide, too: a bubble of relief breaking in them both. Each admission makes their voices raise higher and louder, until Clarke is almost shouting:

"I would still like to kiss you!"

“I would like to kiss you too!” Bellamy answers, and wraps his arm decisively around her waist. A scuffle of awkwardly placed limbs and tangled blanket follows, until, just to make it easy, Clarke climbs right into his lap. She reaches back, grabs the fallen blanket from the floor, and wraps it around them both. Safe and warm. Her arms draped over his shoulders, his hands steady on her waist.

She's waited a long time for this. That's how it feels, like she's been waiting since the first moment she met him, long before she could ever have predicted feeling like this.

The kiss starts slow. Almost tentative. They’re in no hurry to learn each other, after all, because this is not an end. It is—Bellamy pulls her closer, her body crushes up against his chest, and she lets her fingers slide up to further muss his hair—a beginning. The very beginning of something good.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always appreciated! I'm also on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/).


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